Short stories don’t receive the attention they deserve. Some readers dislike having to get oriented to characters, settings, and conflicts only to have to do it all over again with the next story. And some find the tight focus and often unsettled conclusions dissatisfying. I found that the more stories I read, the better I became at appreciating the craft involved in writing short fiction and understanding writers’ tendency to not beat readers over the head to make their point.

I decided to highlight some of my favorite story collections of recent years because they didn’t get the publicity they should have (although a few received critical acclaim) and because as time has passed, they have faded from memory and almost never show up in bookish social media. Here are seven collections you will feel lucky to have read.

The UnAmericans — Molly Antopol

Each of the eight stories is a powerful, novelistic work that manages to encompass a character’s entire life through the use of representative experiences and telling details — as is the case with Munro’s work. Though the stories vary widely in terms of characters and settings, they share the ability to pull the reader in like a riptide and carry you away before you realize it. As I read The UnAmericans, it soon became clear why Antopol was selected by the National Book Foundation as a “5 Under 35 Author.”

The title of the book refers to the fact that the characters in Antopol’s stories are Communists from the first half of the 20th century, dissidents from Russia or Eastern Europe, or non-Americans like the Israeli characters in “A Difficult Phase” and the heartbreaking closing story, “Retrospective.” More broadly, it refers to people who are, in fact, Americans, but are viewed as “un-American” in their beliefs, behavior, or sub-culture by the mainstream culture.

Her stories display an impressive insight into the psyches of the various damaged characters, all of whom are trying to find their place in their own family, culture, or time. The stories take place against a backdrop of significant events, whether World War II, the Communist witch hunt of the 1950s, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, or the tectonic social and economic shifts in the former Communist bloc countries.

Bobcat and Other Stories — Rebecca Lee

Lee’s stories are written with such observational precision and linguistic brilliance that they approach perfection. Her prose has an elegance and surface calm that slowly seduces the reader, while her stories cut deeply into the psyches of her characters. Every sentence has a light touch, yet is fraught with consequence. In that regard, she often reminds me of Graham Greene, who similarly explored his characters with a dry, clear-eyed analysis. Lee probes the dreams, delusions, hypocrisies, and endearing foibles of her characters with intriguing and often surprising results. Her stories rarely go where you expect them to, a bit like life itself.

The opening title story appears at first to be a typical WASP-y dinner party, but the conversation veers in a surprising direction. In “Slatland,” Margit, a depressed 11-year-old, is sent to see an eccentric child psychology professor (a colleague of her father’s) for therapy. “Min” begins on a university campus (as several stories do) and moves to Hong Kong, the home of Min, one of the students. The narrator, Sarah, and Min are in a close platonic relationship that leads to Sarah accompanying Min on his return trip home, where she encounters many unexpected truths. “Fialta” details the rite of passage of a young architecture student working under the tutelage of Franklin Stadbakken, “the so-called architect of the prairies,” a Frank Lloyd Wright-like genius whose glory days are long past but whose cult of acolytes continues to thrive at his sprawling workshop on his Wisconsin farm, Fialta.

Bobcat and Other Stories is a collection that one can race through, but readers are advised to slow down and enjoy the journey. A more methodical pace will reveal what might easily be missed, just as Lee does in these stories of her characters’ varied epiphanies.

Cowboys and East Indians — Nina McConigley

Imagine standing out by virtue of your appearance when you want to blend in. Or being invisible because of that same appearance when you want to be noticed. That is the experience of many bicultural Americans; people view them as “different” because of their appearance when most of them are just as “American” — legally through citizenship and culturally through having been raised in the U.S. Nina McConigley explores this dual existence in the cleverly-titled Cowboys and East Indians, a collection of ten stories based on her experiences as an East Indian living in Wyoming. Where most fiction exploring the immigrant experience is set in urban environments, McConigley takes us to the high altitude, windy isolation and cozy cities of the least-populous state, a place most people would never expect to find Indian-Americans.

McConigley perfectly captures the duality of being pulled in two directions, the culture in which you were born and raised and the culture in which your parents and older relatives came from. In each of these stories, McConigley explores characters’ attempts to navigate through their home and outside lives. She also shows us that Indian-Americans are not a monolithic group with uniform positions on religious, social, and political issues. She drives home what should be an obvious point; while the white, Christian majority, with its limited knowledge of Indian-American life, simplifies them instead of realizing that they are as varied as the majority themselves. (We always imagine that others are not as unique as we are.)

McConigley’s characters are quirky, three-dimensional individuals who are working through strange places both literal and figurative. She writes with a pleasing blend of deep empathy, droll wit, and vivid descriptions of people and, especially, places. The unique nature of Wyoming makes it one of the most memorable characters in this collection.

Faulty Predictions — Karin Lin-Greenberg

Unlike so many story collections today, which tend to the dark and cryptic, Faulty Predictions pulses with a bemused energy. Lin-Greenberg’s stories examine the foibles of a wide range of characters. A group of high school journalism students is confronted by an injustice (“Editorial Decisions”); a glib TV talk show host goes to drastic lengths to connect with his college freshman son (“Late Night with Brad Mack”); two Chinese-American mothers are rivals for power in their close-knit community (“Prized Possessions”).

In the title story, two elderly women housemates are on a mission to stop a murder at a Halloween party on a college campus, with unexpectedly poignant results. “The Local Scrooge” concerns a curmudgeonly college professor who proves to have a soft spot for babies, something he wants to keep secret in order to maintain his reputation, but in the age of social media that proves difficult. In “Miller Duskman’s Mistakes,” the title character is a big city businessman who opens a sophisticated coffee shop (with a floor-to-ceiling glass facade!) in a small northern college town, engendering the resentment of the determinedly unimpressed locals. A variety of complications results ensue. But perhaps the locals have misjudged him.

In these ten stories, Lin-Greenberg displays impressive insight into human nature and empathy for regular people trying to make sense of their lives and circumstances. She also possesses a nicely dry wit and a gift for realistic dialogue that pops off the page.

Jinwar and Other Stories — Alex Poppe

Alex Poppe’s Jinwar and Other Stories is an unsparing look into the world of war in the Middle East, focusing on Syria and Kurdistan (Northern Iraq). The title novella and five accompanying stories take readers behind the scenes of the news reporting that has created the images we have about the people, places, and politics that have dominated foreign affairs for two decades. These are gritty, closely observed depictions of women in the midst of the chaotic world of war and post-war situations, with countries working at cross-purposes both military and diplomatic, and NGOs attempting to alleviate the suffering and facing obstacles from every direction. In short, it is hellish.

“Jinwar” is a four-part story that follows the protagonist during her stint as a nurse’s aide stealing Xanax in a VA hospital before moving first to a riverside hot dog truck somewhere in America during Wiener Week and then to a group of women from an NGO navigating complicated and often dangerous relationships with each other and the men of Northern Iraq. It finishes when she arrives at Jinwar, “a women-only, ecological self-sustaining village … built from scratch by Syrian Kurdish women … a place for women who wanted to live independently and break free from violence.” If you read only one story about the Iraq War, it should be “Jinwar,” which presents a multifaceted view of the impacts it has on the various participants.

“Road Trip in War Time” is set during a suspenseful three-hour drive over the mountains in a smugglers’ car. In “V,” a lonely Kurdish-American teenager in Oakland becomes enamored with a young female rebel leader in Kurdistan before being confronted with the reality of shifting alliances and conflicting loyalties in Kurdistan. “Kurdistan” introduces another teenage girl, this time from Nashville, who is moving to Kurdistan to live with her aunt after her mother dies (her father died eight years earlier while working as an interpreter for the U.S. Army in Iraq).

Poppe balances the struggles of her characters with lots of gallows humor to leaven the brutality and senseless actions of a long list of military, rebel, and jihadist groups (primarily ISIS), all of which are oppressively patriarchal.

The Loss of All Lost Things — Amina Gautier

Gautier’s third collection, The Loss of All Lost Things, is her best work yet. Here she moves beyond the concerns of her earlier work to the issue of loss in its many forms. Her characters have either suffered a loss, literally lost someone or something, or are at loose ends in figuring out what to do with their lives following a significant and often unexpected event. What so impresses me about these stories is Gautier’s ability to plumb the psyche of very complex characters with a psychological acuity that will break your heart repeatedly.

The opening “Lost and Found” follows a young boy who has been abducted by a man identified only as “Thisman” as they move from motel to motel over a period of several months. The title story takes us into the home and life of the grieving parents of the boy from “Lost and Found.” “Cicero Waiting” is a variation on this theme of parents coping with the loss of a child. “Intersections” explores the seemingly cliched affair between a white college professor and a beautiful and brilliant black student with results that manage to sidestep those cliches. “A Cup of My Time” probes another marriage, this time that of young, expectant parents. “What’s Best for You” introduces us to Bernice, a Black single mother who works in the university library and is lonely but maintaining her standards. When the amiable new custodian flirts with her, she is forced to confront the cost of her biases. “As I Wander” finds a widow named Judy trying to adjust to her life following the loss of her older husband. In “What’s Best for You,” we meet Bernice, a black single mother who works in the university library and is lonely but maintaining her standards. When the amiable new custodian flirts with her, she is forced to confront the cost of her biases.

The Loss of All Lost Things is a dark and often disturbing collection, but Gautier is such a gifted storyteller, the characters and conflicts so compelling, the telling details so perfectly chosen, that you can’t turn away. Amina Gautier is a fearless writer who I am willing to follow anywhere.

This Is Paradise — Kristiana Kahakauwila

The stories in Kristiana Kahakauwila’s debut collection depict the real Hawai’i. Beyond the tourist images and fantasies of Hawai’i lies a real place, where island residents live and love, dream and die, and struggle desperately against economic, cultural, and ethnic forces beyond their control.

These six stories are suffused with a bittersweet sadness for what could have — or should have — been, for words unsaid, emotions unexpressed, and customs misunderstood. Kahakauwila is the daughter of a Hawaiian father and German-Norwegian (American) mother and grew up in Long Beach, California. She made frequent trips to Hawaii (mostly to Maui) to visit family and was thus occasionally immersed in the local culture, but she was essentially a Southern California girl. Her ethnic and cultural heritage positions her ideally to write about the two Hawai’is, the tourist version and the locals’ version, with both objectivity and sensitivity, as well as insight and compassion.

The collection opens with the title story, which may well be the best summation of how Hawai’i is experienced differently by tourists and residents. Three groups of narrators — surfer girls, hotel housekeeping employees, upwardly mobile professional young women — tell the story in the first-person plural “we.” Kahakauwila follows it with what might be the best story in This is Paradise. “Wanle” puts us inside the life of a young woman who is following in her deceased father’s footsteps as a legendary cockfighter. As with the tourist girl in the title story, Wanle bears the burden of her illusions. “The Road to Hana” finds a young couple driving the notoriously long, narrow road on Maui, giving them plenty of time to talk. “Portrait of a Good Father” and “The Old Paniolo Way” are the richest and most complex stories in the book. In 43 and 66 pages, respectively, Kahakauwila unfolds an entire world that could easily have been developed into a novel and yet seems complete as a long story.